Lord of the Flies: An Analysis
An excerpt from "Lord of the Flies: An Analysis," in The Georgia Review, Vol. XIX, No. 1, Spring,
1965, pp. 40–57.
[In the following excerpt, Bufkin asserts that in Lord of the Flies Golding reworks the Christian myth of
the Fall of Man, prinicipally through the literary device of irony. ]
William Golding's Lord of the Flies is about evil; and it recounts a quest for order amidst the disorder that
evil causes. Golding has said that the theme of the novel "is an attempt to trace the defects of society back
to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature
of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable." Theme and
moral are worked out through an adaptation of the Christian myth of the Fall of Man, which has been
overlaid with what may be termed the myth of the desert island. Since Golding is a serious student of
Greek, and has stated that Euripides is one of his literary influences, it is not surprising that in Lord of the
Flies the principal technical device he uses is irony. It, like the myth of fallen man, permeates the novel.
The presence of the myth has been duly noted by critics but, though commentators have perceived and
incidentally remarked on a wide variety of ironies in the novel, almost none, with the notable exception of
John Peter, has so far recognized that Lord of the Flies, piercing through illusion and appearance to truth
and reality, is essentially an ironical novel. Recognition of this is basic to any analysis of the work,
providing as it does the key to both the author's development of theme and his handling of his subjectmatter.
Indeed, of two of the major literary influences on Lord of the Flies, one, R. M. Ballantyne's adventure
story The Coral Island, serves a chiefly ironical purpose. The exact nature of that influence has been
established by Golding himself in an interview with Frank Kermode. Asked whether his novel is not a
"kind of black mass version of Ballantyne," Golding replied that it is not: "I think," he said, "it is, in fact,
a realistic view of the Ballantyne situation." When further asked "just how far and how ironically we
ought to treat" the connection between the two books, Golding gave an illuminating reply about the origin
of his novel:
Well, I think, fairly deeply, but again, not ironically in the bad sense, but in almost a compassionate sense.
You see, really, I'm getting at myself in this. What I'm saying to myself is "don't be such a fool, you
remember when you were a boy, a small boy, how you lived on that island with Ralph and Jack and
Peterkin" (who is Simon, by the way, Simon called Peter, you see. It was worked out very carefully in
every possible way[,] this novel). I said to myself finally, "Now you are grown up, you are adult, it's taken
you a long time to become adult, but now you've got there you can see that people are not like that; they
would not behave like that if they were God-fearing English gentlemen, and they went to an island like
that." Their savagery would not be found in natives on an island. As like as not they would find savages
who were kindly and uncomplicated and that the devil would rise out of the intellectual complications of
the three white men on the island itself.
Ballantyne's book, to which Golding refers in this comment, is about an "agreeable triumvirate" of boys
who are marooned on a coral reef in the South Seas: Ralph, the narrator of the story; Jack, their "king";
and Peterkin. Survivors of a "frightful" shipwreck during a "dreadful" storm, they explore the island,
which they think must be "the ancient paradise," and, making the best of their situation, lead a happy and
orderly life there, hunting hogs, eating fruit, and exploring. "There was, indeed," says Ralph, "no note of
discord whatever in the symphony we played together on that sweet Coral Island; and I am now
persuaded that this was owing to our having been all tuned to the same key, namely, that of love! Yes, we
loved one another with much fervency, while we lived on that island; and, for the matter of that, we love
each other still." This much of the plot is what Golding used; he neglected the later episodes that deal
with pirates and cannibals. But it was just this much of the plot that must have seemed false, or
unrealistic, to Golding.
Although neither appreciation nor understanding of Lord of the Flies is dependent upon familiarity with
The Coral Island, the reader acquainted with Ballantyne's work can better see what Golding has done in
his own novel. The person who knows both stories is aware of the contrast between them, and knows that
the contrast is, in effect and purpose, ironical. It resides in the discrepancy between the falseness, or
unreality, of his source, as Golding sees it, and the truth, or reality, of Lord of the Flies. Golding must
surely have had this juxtaposition in mind, else he would not have so carefully duplicated in his own
novel details from Ballantyne's.
A second major literary influence on Lord of the Flies, an influence that no critic has noted before,
despite its almost glaring presence, is Paradise Lost. The epic and the novel have a common theme, the
Fall of Man; and it is altogether feasible that Golding, in paralleling in Lord of the Flies situations highly
similar to those in Paradise Lost, meant to enrich and to enlarge, by associative suggestion, the scope of
his narrative.
The first of these parallels is the setting. Golding's island, like Milton's Eden, represents the original
earthly paradise where occurs the Fall of Man. That the island is meant to represent this paradise is easily
deduced from the following sentence: "The forest re-echoed; and birds lifted, crying out of the tree-tops,
as on that first morning ages ago." And it is quite possible also that the killing of the sow, to which the
boys are "wedded in lust," may itself, since the passage is presented in terms of sexual intercourse,
function as a symbolic, parodic re-enactment of the Original Sin:
...the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves at her. This dreadful eruption from an unknown world
made her frantic; she squealed and bucked and the air was full of sweat and noise and blood and terror.
Roger ran round the heap, prodding with his spear whenever pigflesh appeared. Jack was on top of the
sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he
was leaning with his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing
became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The
sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her.
These two passages may be said to deal with the natural aspects of the Fall—the natural world and, in it,
man. Other passages paralleling incidents in Paradise Lost may be said, in contrast, to be based on the
supernatural. In the one, Golding's boys represent the earliest man and his Fall in Eden; in the second,
they represent the fallen angels, or devils, and the island is Hell. Golding makes clear that Jack and the
choirboys are devils—fallen angels. Curiously, no critic has commented on why they are choirboys and
not just ordinary schoolboys. Golding, having "worked out very carefully in every possible way this
novel," certainly had a definite purpose in making them so. Even though the concept of angels as singers
is both traditional and common, Golding points out the connection between the boys and angels
explicitly. He says that "ages ago"—a repeated phrase connecting the singing boys and the singing birds
of "that first morning"—the boys "had stood in two demure rows and their voices had been the song of
angels." A double irony is at work here. The phrase means that the boys, who are devils, sang like angels
and also that they sang songs of angels; that is, liturgic chants which, on the island, undergo pagan and
savage metamorphosis into " Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!" (which Golding
terms a "chant" rising "ritually").
In Paradise Lost the angels fall from Heaven while war is raging there, and Golding has duplicated this
situation, too; for the plane carrying the boys is attacked and shot down during a war. In fact, war is the
very cause of their being there, just as it is the cause of the angels' fall from Heaven. Thus while the island
the boys land on is an emblem of Paradise, it is ironically also an emblem of Hell, complete with the
traditional fire (watching which, Piggy "glanced nervously into hell"). And there is also a presiding
demoniac god, the Lord of the Flies—Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils.
Finally, in Lord of the Flies the boys, all of them, assemble, exchange names (perhaps a parallel to the
roll-call of the infernal host), hold a council, elect a leader, and explore the island. These are the same
acts, and they occur in the same order, that the fallen angels perform in Milton's Hell. Ironically, not Jack,
who is "the most obvious leader," but Ralph, who is "no devil," is chosen. But since the movement of the
plot is toward the emergence of evil in the boys and its gradual domination of them, it is, fittingly, not
long before Ralph's position is usurped by Jack, who finally leads the now savage tribe of boys with their
"anonymous devils' faces" and sits in the midst of them "like an idol." (This movement may be viewed,
further, as a correspondence to Satan's securing of power in the world.)
The story of Lord of the Flies is told from the omniscient point of view. Golding as narrator shifts from
one boy to another, among the major characters, telling each one's thoughts and decisions, explaining his
motivations and reactions, or seeing a situation with his perspective; and at the very end he shifts away
from the boys to their adult rescuer. Occasionally, at certain crucial times when the context of the novel
calls for an objective, uninvolved voice to be heard as the voice of truth, Golding stands back from the
action and comments unobtrusively on the situation. For the most part, however, the story develops
through dramatic action and dialogue, not through authorial exposition and comment; and this method
contrasts with the moralizing first-person narration of The Coral Island, which Golding is "correcting."
He perhaps felt that readers familiar with the Ballantyne story would be aware of this contrast. Instead of
telling, then, Golding is showing; and the difference in this technique is as significant as the contrast
between the two writers' attitudes toward their material.
The omniscient point of view is another device for widening the scope of the novel, for obviously a part
of the whole plan of the narrative is that the attitudes of each of the four principal characters—Ralph,
Jack, Piggy, Simon—be included. This particular point of view—the omniscient—is, furthermore,
appropriate and important to the novel in that it can control and unify both what happens on the island and
what is happening in the world surrounding it. This fictional device is capable of producing an over-all
irony that another device could hardly so economically and directly create. The identification of the dead
parachutist, for instance, and the information about where he comes from and why, would be impossible
without the omniscient point of view; and the kind of irony that derives from the contrast between the
reader's knowledge of the true situation and the characters' ignorance of it would have been otherwise
unobtainable.
One of the most arresting features of the structure of Lord of the Flies is that, though it develops as a
chronologically straight narrative, it is actually bipartite, Chapters I-IX forming one part, the last three
chapters (X-XII) forming the other. Thematically, an important point is subtly made by this division. The
first part shows the boys in a state of innocence, and the second shows them in a primitive state of evil.
What is not immediately perceived is that in the second part the boys are placed in situations almost
identical to situations in the first part (notably those created by storm and by fire). In their changed state,
however, the boys react to the situations entirely differently; and the second part thus functions as a
concentrated, contrasting restatement of much of the material of the first part of the novel.
This contrast points directly to the theme of the novel: the loss of innocence is the acquisition of the
knowledge of evil, which corrupts man and darkens his heart. Movement of plot from innocence to evil is
thus thematically vertical, not horizontal; it is a re-enactment of the Fall and its consequences. In support
of the theme Golding continually uses words of downward motion. The opening sentence itself sets in
motion this running verbal motif: "The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of
rock...." The boys are "dropped" from the sky. The parachutist is a sign come "down from the world of
grown-ups," and later his corpse "swayed down through a vastness of wet air...; falling, still falling, it
sank towards the beach...." Simon, after his hallucinatory conversation with the Lord of the Flies, "fell
down and lost consciousness" and, when killed, he "fell over the steep edge of the rock" and the
orgiastically excited boys surged after him and "poured down the rock," whereupon "the clouds opened
and let down the rain like a waterfall." Piggy, hit by the rock, "fell forty feet," and Ralph weeps for "the
fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy." In the last episode of the novel the naval officer
is introduced while "looking down at Ralph in wary astonishment." These are but a few of the many
examples that run through the novel, suggesting the spiritual fall through words of physical action and
direction.
Source Citation:
Bufkin, E. C. "Lord of the Flies: An Analysis." EXPLORING Novels. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003.
Discovering Collection. Gale. Etowah High School. 30 Aug. 2013
<http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&source=gale&srcprod=DISC&userGroupName=wood904
20&prodId=DC&tabID=T001&docId=EJ2111200113&type=retrieve&contentSet=GSRC&version=1.0>.
Teaching Rationale for William Golding's Lord of the Flies
An excerpt from "Teaching Rationale for William Golding's Lord of the Flies," in Censored Books:
Critical Viewpoints, Nicholas J. Karolides, Lee Burress, John M. Kean, eds., The Scarecrow Press, Inc.,
1993, pp. 351–57.
[In the following excerpt, Slayton finds Lord of the Flies to be a parable about modern civilization and
human morality, and describes Golding's literary techniques. ]
Lord of the Flies is William Golding's parable of life in the latter half of the twentieth century, the
nuclear age, when society seems to have reached technological maturity while human morality is still
prepubescent. Whether or not one agrees with the pessimistic philosophy, the idiocentric psychology or
the fundamentalist theology espoused by Golding in the novel, if one is to use literature as a "window on
the world," this work is one of the panes through which one should look.
The setting for Lord of the Flies is in the literary tradition of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Johann
Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson, and like these earlier works provides the necessary ingredients for an
idyllic utopian interlude. A plane loaded with English school boys, aged five through twelve, is being
evacuated to a safe haven in, perhaps, Australia to escape the "Reds," with whom the English are engaged
in an atomic war. Somewhere in the tropics the plane is forced to crash land during a violent storm. All
the adults on board are lost when the forward section of the plane is carried out to sea by tidal waves. The
passenger compartment, fortuitously, skids to a halt on the island, and the young passengers escape
uninjured.
The boys find themselves in a tropical paradise: bananas, coconuts and other fruits are profusely
available. The sea proffers crabs and occasional fish in tidal pools, all for the taking. The climate is
benign. Thus, the stage is set for an idyllic interlude during which British fortitude will enable the boys to
master any possible adversity. In fact, Golding relates that just such a nineteenth century novel, R. M.
Ballantyne's Coral Island, was the inspiration for Lord of the Flies. In that utopian story the boy
castaways overcame every obstacle they encountered with the ready explanation, "We are British, you
know!"
Golding's tropical sojourners, however, do not "live happily ever after." Although they attempt to
organize themselves for survival and rescue, conflicts arise as the boys first neglect, then refuse, their
assigned tasks. As their "society" fails to build shelters or to keep the signal fire going, fears emanating
from within—for their environment is totally non-threatening—take on a larger than life reality. Vines
hanging from trees become "snake things" in the imaginings of the "little'uns." A nightmare amidst fretful
sleep, causing one of the boys to cry out in the night, conjures up fearful "beasties" for the others. Their
fears become more real than existence on the tropical paradise itself when the twins, Sam 'n Eric, report
their enervating experience with the wind-tossed body of the dead parachutist. Despite Simon's
declaration that "there is no beast, it's only us," and Piggy's disavowal of "ghosts and things," the fear of
the unknown overcomes their British reserve and under Jack's all-too-willing chieftainship the boys'
retreat from civilization begins.
In the initial encounter with a pig, Jack is unable to overcome his trained aversion to violence to even
strike a blow at the animal. Soon, however, he and his choirboys-turned-hunters make their first kill. They
rationalize that they must kill the animals for meat. The next step back from civilization occurs and the
meat pretext is dropped; the real objective is to work their will on other living things.
Then, killing begins to take on an even more sinister aspect. The first fire the boys build to attract rescuers
roars out of control and one of the younger boys is accidentally burned to death. The next death, that of
Simon, is not an accident. He is beaten to death when he rushes into the midst of the ritual dance of the
young savages. Ironically, he has come to tell the boys that he has discovered that the beast they fear is
not real. Then Piggy, the last intellectual link with civilization, is killed on impulse by the sadistic Roger.
Last, all semblance of civilized restraint is cast-off as the now-savage tribe of boys organizes itself to hunt
down and kill their erstwhile leader, Ralph, who had tried desperately to prepare them to carry on in the
fashion expected of upper middle-class British youth.
That Golding intended Lord of the Flies as a paradigm for modern civilization is concretely evident at the
conclusion of the work. During the final confrontation at the rock fort between Ralph and Piggy and Jack
and his tribe, the reader readily forgets that these individuals in conflict are not adults. The manhunt for
Ralph, too, seems relative only to the world of adults. The reader is so inclined to lose sight of the age of
his characters that Golding must remind that these participants are pre-adolescents: The naval officer who
interrupts the deadly manhunt sees "A semicircle of little boys, their bodies streaked with colored clay,
sharp sticks in hand...." Unlike that officer, the reader knows that it was not "fun and games" of the boys
that the naval officer interrupted. The officer does not realize—as the reader knows—that he has just
saved Ralph from a sacrificial death and the other boys from becoming premeditated murderers. Neither
is the irony of the situation very subtle: The boys have been "rescued" by an officer from a British manof-war, which will very shortly resume its official activities as either hunter or hunted in the deadly adult
game of war.
Golding, then, in Lord of the Flies is asking the question which continues as the major question haunting
the world today: How shall denizens of the earth be rescued from our fears and our own pursuers—
ourselves? While Golding offers no ready solutions to our dilemma, an understanding of his parable
yields other questions which may enable readers to become seekers in the quest for a moral world. Even if
one disagrees with Golding's judgment of the nature of human beings and of human society, one profits
from his analysis of the problems confronting people today....
Golding is a master at his trade and Lord of the Flies has achieved critical acclaim as the best of his
works. Indeed, a dictionary of literary terminology might well be illustrated with specific examples from
this piece of prose. The development of the several focal characters in this work is brilliantly and
concretely done. In addition, the omniscient narrative technique, plotting, relating story to setting and the
use of irony, foreshadowing, and certainly, symbolism are so carefully and concretely accomplished that
the work can serve as an invaluable teaching aid to prepare students to read other literature with a degree
of understanding far beyond a simplistic knowledge of the surface events of the story. Golding's
characterizations will be used in this rationale to illustrate these technical qualities of the novel.
A strength of Lord of the Flies lies in techniques of characterization. There are five major characters who
are developed as wholly-rounded individuals whose actions and intensity show complex human
motivation: Ralph, Jack, Roger, Simon and Piggy. A study of these characterizations shows the wide
range of techniques for developing persona utilized by Golding and by other authors:
Ralph , the protagonist, is a rather befuddled everyman. He is chosen for leadership by the group for all
the wrong reasons. Ralph does not seek the leadership role; he is elected because he is older (12 plus),
somewhat larger, is attractive in personal appearance and, most strikingly, he possesses the conch shell
which reminds the boys of the megaphone with which their late adult supervisors directed and instructed
them. In the unsought leadership role Ralph demonstrates courage, intelligence and some diplomatic skill.
On the negative side he quickly becomes disillusioned with the democratic process and without Piggy's
constant urgings would have cast aside the chief's role even before Jack's coup d'etat. Ralph also
demonstrates other weaknesses as he unthinkingly gives away Piggy's hated nickname and, more
significantly, he gets caught up in the mob psychology of the savage dance and takes part in the ritualistic
murder of Simon. Thus, by relating causes and effects, Golding reveals Ralph's change from a proper
British lad to group leader to his disenchantment and finally to his becoming the object of the murderous
hunt by the boys who once chose him as their leader.
Jack, the antagonist, is developed as the forceful villain. Outgoing, cocky and confident, Jack marches his
choir boys in military formation up the beach to answer the call of the conch. Jack is a natural leader who,
except for his exploitative nature, might have been a congealing force for good. Instead, his lust for power
precipitates the conflict with Ralph and Piggy's long-range planning for rescue. To attain leadership, Jack
caters to boyish desires for ready delights and after he is assured that his choir boys will follow in this
new direction, he resorts to intimidation to increase his following. In Jack, Golding has developed a
prototype of the charismatic leader who gains adherents by highlighting the fears and fulfilling the
ephemeral needs and desires of followers.
Roger , "the hangman's horror," is a stereotyped character who does not change. He readily sheds a thin
veneer of civilization which has been imposed upon him by the authority of the policeman and the law.
So easily his arm loses the restraints which had once prohibited him from hitting the littl'uns with tossed
rocks to a point where he can kill Piggy on impulse. It is but one more small step for him to proclaim the
ritual dance must end in killing and to premeditate the murder of Ralph.
Simon is the quintessential Christ-figure. A thin, frail little boy, subject to fainting spells, he alone has the
mental acumen and the courage to go onto the mountain and disprove the existence of the "beast." He is
martyred for his efforts by the group which no longer wishes to hear his "good news."
Piggy , the pragmatic intellectual, is of necessity the most steadfast in motivation. He is tied to civilization
by his physical weaknesses. Overweight, asthmatic, and completely dependent for sight upon his
spectacles, the life of the happy savage has no allure for him. Without the aids of civilization, such as eye
glasses and allergy shots, he cannot long survive. Consequently, he must reject the ephemeral allures
offered by Jack and steadfastly hold, and seek to hold Ralph, to maintaining the smoke signal, his only
hope for the aid and succor of rescue. His steadfastness in this aim enables him to call up the
uncharacteristic courage to make the last appeal to Jack and his tribe before the rock fort because "right is
right." His plea is to no avail; the sadistic Roger releases the boulder which throws Piggy from the cliff to
his death.
Another minor character, Percival Wemys Madison, is developed as a stereotype to demonstrate the
fragility of rote learning. This "little'un" who can only recite his name and address as a response soon
forgets even that as all trappings of civilization are lost by the boys.
Thus, Golding's techniques of characterization afford superior examples of the writer's craft and apt
material to use to help students learn to interpret authorial voice and to respond to a piece of literature as a
level beyond the denotative.
Lord of the Flies has earned for itself and its author great critical acclaim. It has also been extolled by
teachers for the excitement it can engender in readers and as a work in which the motivation of characters
is readily understood by adolescent readers. Despite these accolades for the novel as a work of literary art
and as a teaching tool, Lord of the Flies has on occasion aroused the ire of would-be censors.
Some have opposed the use of the novel in the classroom because of the use of "vulgar" language. Certain
words, notably "sucks," "ass," and the British slang word "bloody," are used. It is patently obvious that
there is no prurient motivation behind the author's choice of these words. Not one of these words is ever
used outside of a context in which the word appears to be quite naturally the word the character would
use. The choir boys may well sing like "angels," as is stated; nevertheless, these are perfectly normal preadolescent boys. Given the proclivities of such youth the world over, verisimilitude would be lost had
they, amongst themselves, always spoken like angels.
The sexual symbolism of the killing of the sow has also raised some puritanical brows. This violent scene
is described in terms which might well be used to describe a rape. Such symbolism is fully justified,
however, if the author is to be allowed to make his point that the motivation of the boys, casting away the
cloak of civilization, is no longer merely securing food. Rather, they have moved from serving practical
needs to an insane lust for working their will upon other creatures. The next step is the slaughter of their
own kind.
Objection, too, has come upon that very point: children killing children. One must remind those who
object to this violence that this piece of literature is a parable. Children are specifically used to show that
even the innocence of childhood can be corrupted by fears from within. Those who would deny Golding
this mode of establishing his theme would deny to all authors the right to make their point in an explicit
fashion.
The most vociferous denunciation of Lord of the Flies has been vocalized by those who have misread the
book to the point that they believe it deals with Satanism. The symbolism of the title, which is the English
translation of the Greek word "Beelzebub," is surely being misinterpreted by such folk. In fact, theologian
Davis Anderson states unequivocally that "Golding is a Christian writer." Anderson defines the central
theme of Lord of the Flies as a statement of what it is like to experience the fall from innocence into sin
and to experience damnation. Thus, a theologian sees the novel as one dealing with the Christian doctrine
of original sin and of the rupture of man's relationship with God! Consequently, one who would attack
this novel as an exercise in Satanism assuredly holds an indefensible premise.
Source Citation:Slayton, Paul. "Teaching Rationale for William Golding's Lord of the Flies."
EXPLORING Novels. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering Collection. Gale. Etowah High School.
30 Aug. 2013
<http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&source=gale&srcprod=DISC&userGroupName=wood904
20&prodId=DC&tabID=T001&docId=EJ2111200115&type=retrieve&contentSet=GSRC&version=1.0>.
The Myth of Innocence
"The Myth of Innocence," in Revue des langues vivantes, Vol. 28, No. 4, 1962, pp. 510-20.
[In the excerpt below, Michel-Michot discusses the theme of good vs. evil in The Lord of the Flies. She
also outlines the ways in which Golding's novel deviates from its models—Robert Ballantyne's The Coral
Island (1858) and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719).]
William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954) calls to mind both Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1858) and
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). In each they isolate people on an island; a group of children in Lord of
the Flies, three adolescents in The Coral Island, and a young man in Robinson Crusoe; and the characters
they present, what they are and what they undertake, so strikingly reflect the problems and ideas of the
age in which each book was written.
Lord of the Flies is obviously intended as a counterpart to The Coral Island. Golding wanted to explode
the myth of the innocence of the child living, as in Ballantyne's romance, in harmony with nature on a
desert island, and leading brave civilized and even civilizing lives. In whatever situation they find
themselves, Ballantyne's children never show any impatience with one another; the understanding is
perfect, practical difficulties are easily overcome; there is no question of their ever failing in what they
undertake for they are `Britons', a term they use to congratulate each other. The only two things that
prevent them from considering their island as Paradise are the existence of cannibals and of pirates. The
Coral Island is of course a romance but, as we shall see later, it is also a sign of the age.
Golding chooses the same situation as Ballantyne's. His main characters are, like Ballantyne's, called
Ralph and Jack. But though, at first, his children delight in their freedom and in the beauty and the
pleasures of the island—plenty of food, fruit, drink, and plenty of `fun'; one of them even observes "it is
like Coral Island"—the situation soon deteriorates, and when at the end the naval officer taking in the
horror of the situation, remarks "I should have thought that a pack of British boys—you're all British
aren't you?—would have been able to put up a better show than that", Golding strikes the final blow at
Ballantyne's conception of the child....
In Lord of the Flies a group of schoolboys aged between six and twelve, evacuated from England where
an atomic war is raging, are accidentally stranded on a desert island in the South Pacific. They are left on
their own, without adult guidance, to organize their own society. Their first aim is to abide as much as
possible, in spite of their isolation and of the primitive way of life they have to adopt, by the standards of
life that the civilized world of adults has infused into them, and to wait for rescue. The fire which they try
to keep going on the top of the mountain is the symbol of their attachment to civilization for it embodies
their hope for rescue.... At first it is fun, a boy-scout adventure. But gradually more sinister elements in
their nature take control. They imagine that there is a beast on the island, that it comes from the water and
moves at night, unseen. Some of the boys have seen it in the mountain. The beast quickly becomes the
sign of the children's unrest, of their superstitious fear which becomes so overwhelming that it eventually
takes control of the situation. The boys in charge of the hunting have become so intent on killing that they
no longer understand that the aim of hunting was originally to provide the community with food. They
mistake the means for the end. The community splits into two groups; the hunters deviate further and
further from the standards of civilized life that the other group strains to preserve. The hunters become a
savage group of outlaws giving themselves up to primitive rites: they paint their faces and perform
horrible ritual dances round the Pig's head they have actually defied or round a boy playing the part of a
chased pig, but finally they perform their killing dance on one of their former comrades, and kill him on
the rhythm of their murderous song `kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!'. The hunters'
deification of the Pig's Head, which becomes the Lord of the Flies himself, and the horror of their rituals
stress the fact that the children have fallen into a state of savagery in which evil is all-powerful... The
situation deteriorates more and more until the hunters, drunk with frenzy, kill Simon when he brings them
the `good news'. For Simon has discovered the truth about the beast, Simon is a visionary who wants to
find out the nature of that `beastie'; he is given a deeper insight into the situation than the others: "When
discussing the identify of the beast Simon explained: `what I meant is...maybe it's only us'"; or "however
Simon thought of the beast there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and
sick". Alone in the mountain, Simon saw a humped thing slightly moving in the wind and he understood
then that this thing was corpse of a pilot, rotting away with his parachute still fixed on his back. The wind
blew and the "figure lifted, bowed and breathed foully at him". This is the beast, it is Man himself "at
once heroic and sick", a fallen creature, dead, a symbol of war and decay, a reminiscence of the state of
the adult world when the children left it, and a symbol of what is threatening the boys' community. Simon
now holds the clue to their situation; there is no `beastie', the evil is in the children themselves. This is
made explicit when Simon, looking at the pig's head, is granted a moment of insight; the head is speaking
to him; "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill. You knew didn't you? I'm part
of you? Close, close, close!...This is ridiculous, you know perfectly well you'll only meet me down there
(on the beach, among the others) so don't try to escape!" Simon hurries down to the boys and wants to tell
them the `comforting' news but he is savagely murdered by the frightened boys who perform their beastkilling-dance on him. After this more or less deliberate sacrifice they lose all sense of control. The
`littluns' have long before joined the hunter group because they feel more secure among them. They
declared war on the last few powerless representatives of civilized living. They torture and murder them.
And when a naval detachment eventually comes to rescue the last survivors, the hunters are madly
chasing Ralph, their former elected leader, across the island, burning everything on their way.
The appearance of the naval officer at the end and the sudden shift in point of view throws the story into
focus. Though the characters are children they had to deal with problems that have their exact equivalent
in the adult world. Now they are dwarfed to children again, they are crying little boys held in control by
an adult presence. Yet we cannot forget the cruelty and the savagery of what they have done and of what
they were up to, had the rescue been delayed a little longer. We cannot forget the potential evil that will
come to the surface again whenever the circumstances permit it: "In the middle of them, with filthy body,
matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart" (italics
mine). The innocence of the child and of man is a fallacy; by nature man has a terrible potentiality for
evil. The fact that Golding chooses children as protagonists, makes it all the more striking and terrifying.
It explodes for ever the view that man is originally good or even neutral and that society is the source of
all evil. Neither does Golding allow us to believe that the evil a child is born with can be annihilated in
the child's process of growing up or that it can be eradicated by a pattern of rules imposed by civilization
or by a social or political system. For, though the appearance of the naval officer seems to restore order,
we cannot forget that the war carried out by the boys on their island is neither better nor worse than the
atomic war that was raging over the world at the opening of the book; and in a way the children with their
painted faces are no different from the naval officer in his uniform with his gilt buttons.
The children's community is in fact a microcosm of the adult world. Golding has isolated his children on
an island and has deliberately magnified the problems and issues at stake. The situation is first presented
as a `game' enacted by children, but we are gradually led to forget that the characters are boys; it then
assumes the seriousness and the gravity of our contemporary world. Golding works out his themes by
means of symbols. The conch which regulates the assemblies is the symbol of democracy, of free speech;
but the defect of the system is mercilessly pointed out; "we have lots of assemblies. Everybody enjoys
speaking and being together. We decide things. But they don't get done". The conch is inadequate and
powerless confronted with violence and tyranny: Piggy, the fat intelligent boy, is savagely murdered
while holding the conch.
The fire which must be kept burning is the symbol of their hope for rescue, of their attachment to
civilization, for it will reveal their presence on the island to the outside world. But it can be otherwise
interpreted, and this makes for the richness of Golding's work. It is a distant end that will be reached only
at the price of an everyday effort; it is a duty that must be done for no immediate end: it can be culture
and education. But the fire remains unattended for the first time when Jack prefers to go hunting wild pigs
and forgets everything about the fire; as some boys and all the `littluns' gradually come to join Jack's
tribe, it becomes more and more difficult to keep the fire going because the interest of the majority lies
elsewhere i.e., in the urge to satisfy a lower and cruel instinct which gives them the illusion of security.
The hunters no longer hunt to provide the community with food but because they like the killing itself,
first the killing of wild pigs and finally the killing of their former comrades.
The same symbolism is also to be found in the characters. Golding makes them work out archetypal
patterns of human society or of different conflicting tendencies within the individual. Ralph, the elected
leader, and Jack, the hunter and final chief and tyrant, are the two polarizing figures. Ralph is a `decent'
chap, a natural leader but is not very intelligent. He is assisted by Piggy, a fat asthmatic intelligent boy
who is always a butt for the others; he represents thoughtfulness, but is unable to communicate his ideas
to a vast audience hence he becomes Ralph's adviser. Jack on the other hand is arrogant, proud, boastful,
unscrupulous and finally becomes a murderer. Simon has insight but is diametrically opposed to Piggy.
The majority thinks he is `batty' because he is an individualist who goes his own way; he is ready to face
anything to find out the nature of the beast; he goes alone into the mountain and discovers the truth about
it. The way he meets his death...makes him a martyr. The twins, Sam and Eric, who always act in concert,
represent the average man of good will who will stick to his principles as long as possible, but who will
eventually join the majority when it is too hard to stand alone on his own ground. The `littluns' stand for
the mob the leaders work on: neglectful and idle when they are on Ralph's side and are asked to contribute
to the welfare of the community; frightened of the dark and a prey to superstitious fears, but disciplined
and obedient when they become part of the hunter tribe and are under Jack's drastic military and
tyrannical leadership. Jack is assisted by two or three evil-minded boys, one of them being the official
torturer.
This brief analysis is intended to suggest the vast scale of human values and social or political problems
both universal and contemporary that are dealt with in Lord of the Flies. It is also worth mentioning that
if this is an allegorical story, it is nonetheless deeply rooted in the physical and psychological world of the
child. The story can be read as a story and the allegorical meaning emerges from it.
Golding's wish to use the same situation as Ballantyne's is obvious; but the final result is just the opposite.
Ballantyne's characters are children free of evil—as F. Kermode so rightly put it, they belong to the
period when "boys were sent out of Arnoldian schools certified free of Original Sin". They fear nothing
and behave like gentlemen towards each other, not like adolescents. They embody the blind optimism, the
assurance and sometimes the pompousness of the 19th century....
In the Coral Island the natives' faces "besides being tatooed, were besmeared with red paint and streaked
with white"; in Lord of the Flies there are no native cannibals, it is Jack's hunters who paint their faces:
"Jack began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling...the mask was a thing of its own,
behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness". Golding knows that the distinction
is not merely a simple one between good Christians and bad cannibals.
When Golding writes in detail about the life on the island, it is often to stress the cruelty and the
intolerance of the boys: Simon is `batty' and, though Ralph and Piggy make a good pair, Ralph can't help
teasing or laughing at clumsy Piggy: "there was always a little pleasure to be got out of pulling Piggy's
leg, even if one did it by accident". It is not necessary to dwell on the savagery of Jack's tribe.
To destroy Ballantyne's pastoral picture of life on a tropical island where everything is so delightful,
Golding speaks of the diarrhea of the `littluns' who eat too much fruit, of the sweat, of the flies that cover
the pig's head which in Simon's delirium becomes the Lord of the Flies himself. Golding creates
sympathy in the reader for a group of children and gradually uses the reader's repulsion for dirt and
brutality to increase his horror at discovering the true nature of man.
Instead of Ballantyne's blind faith in the superiority of the white race, Golding asks how superior we are
to savages and he points to the superficiality of our civilization: indeed it seems to be powerless against
the innate brutality of man, against his fear which is in fact the expression of the evil that pervades the
world.
Ballantyne's characters do not develop, they go through a series of exciting and heroic adventures and are
left unchanged at the end of the novel. On the contrary Golding shows the deterioration of the initial
situation and of the characters; but the book is not altogether pessimistic: though Ralph is on the point of
defeat, he has learned much in the process of growing to maturity, he has learned to recognize the quality
of Piggy's mind—"Ralph wept for...the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy"—he has
learned much about his enemies and about himself, that is, how short he fell of his own standards. The
book can also be read as a metaphor for human experience....
Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies stand in contrast to The Coral Island, for Ballantyne's characters
are presented as fundamentally good whereas Defoe's and Golding's are depraved. Crusoe is the depraved
18th century nonconformist; he has led "a dreadful life destitute of the knowledge and the fear of God"
but he comes to accept his unfortunate condition as God's punishment for his misspent life and to see a
sign God's mercy in the fact that he alone has survived the wreck of the ship and is allowed to live fairly
comfortably on his island. He meditates constantly and sees the hand of God in the smallest events of his
daily life, for he is not free of evil and needs the help of God to resist temptation. Yet compared to
Golding's view of man, the depraved 18th century nonconformist is far less depraved. Defoe's
presentation of evil belongs to the puritan tradition: the main issues of life are often reduced to a mere
choice between good and evil i.e., between God and the devil. Defoe is thus far from exploring the
problem of evil as thoroughly as Golding whose theme in Lord of the Flies is before everything else, the
exploration of evil from a metaphysical point of view.
After the creative energy of Robinson Crusoe, his constant struggle against his depraved nature, his
ability through work and inventiveness to solve his problems, came the complacency of Ballantyne's
characters, for whom no problem actually existed and who enjoyed a position which they had inherited;
they were innocent Christian adolescents going through `exciting' adventures and bringing the 19th
century truth—Christianity—to the barbarians of some distant island of the Pacific. Then came Lord of
the Flies, the savage destruction of the myth of innocence, presenting us with a society of children which
is microcosm of the adult world. Golding points to the deterioration of the values fought for by Robinson
Crusoe and blindly taken for granted by the boys of The Coral Island. He explodes the myth of innocence
and takes us back to the problem of Evil ignored by Ballantyne and oversimplified by Defoe....
Source Citation:Michel-Michot, Paulette. "The Myth of Innocence." DISCovering Authors. Online ed.
Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering Collection. Gale. Etowah High School. 30 Aug. 2013
Historical Context: Lord of the Flies
Golding and World War II
"When I was young, before the war, I did have some airy-fairy views about man.... But I went through the
war and that changed me. The war taught me different and a lot of others like me," Golding told Douglas
A. Davis in the New Republic. Golding was referring to his experiences as captain of a British rocketlaunching craft in the North Atlantic, where he was present at the sinking of the Bismarck, crown ship of
the German navy, and participated in the D-Day invasion of German-occupied France. He was also
directly affected by the devastation of England by the German air force, which severely damaged the
nation's infrastructure and marked the beginning of a serious decline in the British economy. Wartime
rationing continued well into the postwar period. Items like meat, bread, sugar, gasoline, and tobacco
were all in short supply and considered luxuries. To turn their country around, the government
experimented with nationalization of key industries like coal, electric power, and gas companies as well
as the transportation industry. Socialized medicine and government-sponsored insurance were also
introduced. Such changes, and the difficult conditions that produced them, suggest the climate of the
postwar years in which Golding wrote Lord of the Flies.
The Geography of a Tropical Island
Although highly romanticized in both Western fiction and nonfiction, life on a typical tropical island is
not all that easy. The weather is usually very hot and humid, and there is no breeze once one enters the
jungle. While fish abound in the surrounding waters and the scent of tropical flowers wafts through the
air, one must still watch out for sharks, and one cannot live on a diet of fruit and flowers. James Fahey, a
naval seaman who served in the Pacific islands during the war, concluded: "We do not care too much for
this place, the climate takes the life right out of you."
The Political Climate of the 1950s
The rise of the Cold War between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the western powers after the end of
World War II signaled a new phase in world geopolitics. Actual wars during the 1950s were confined to
relatively small-scale conflicts, as in Korea (involving the United States) and Vietnam (involving the
French). The nonviolent, yet still threatening, sabre-rattling between the USSR and the United States,
however, reached a peak with the first successful hydrogen bomb test by the United States on November
1, 1952, at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. A second device, hundreds of times more powerful than the
atomic bombs dropped over Japan, was successfully detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll. In the
United States, public fallout shelters were designated for large cities, allegedly to protect citizens from the
rain of radioactive materials produced by such nuclear explosions. Schoolchildren practiced taking cover
under their desks during regular air raid drills. Also in 1954, Canada and the United States agreed to build
a "DEW" line (Distant Early Warning Line) of radar stations across the Arctic to warn of approaching
aircraft or missiles over the Arctic. In short, the atmosphere of the first half of the 1950s was one of
suspicion, distrust, and threats among the big powers. An atomic war on the scale that Lord of Flies
suggested did not seem out of the realm of possibility during the early 1950s.
Source Citation:
"Historical Context: Lord of the Flies." EXPLORING Novels. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering
Collection. Gale. Etowah High School. 30 Aug. 2013
<http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&source=gale&srcprod=DISC&userGroupName=wood904
20&prodId=DC&tabID=T001&docId=EJ2111500097&type=retrieve&contentSet=GSRC&version=1.0>.
Themes and Construction: Lord of the Flies
Themes
Good and Evil
During their abandonment on the island, Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and many of the other boys show elements
of good in their characters. Ralph's calm "stillness," and his attentiveness to others' needs, make him a
potentially good person. Good may be defined here as something just, virtuous, or kind that conforms to
the moral order of the universe. Piggy's knowledge and belief in the power of science and rational thought
to help people understand and thus control the physical world for their mutual benefit are also obviously a
force for good. Simon, always ready to help out, sensitive to the power of evil but not afraid to stand up to
it, is perhaps the strongest representative of the forces of good in the story.
Yet all of these characters ultimately fall victim to the forces of evil, as represented by the cruelties of the
hunters, especially Jack and Roger. Piggy loses his glasses, and thus the power to make fire. This power,
when controlled by the forces of reason, is a powerful tool for good: it warms the boys, cooks their food,
and provides smoke for the rescue signals that are their only hope for survival. But in the hands of those
with less skill and knowledge, the fire becomes an agent of destruction—first unintentionally in the hands
of those who are ignorant of its powers, then purposefully when Jack and the hunters use it to smoke out
and destroy their opponents. It is Simon's bad luck to stumble upon the feasting group of boys with his
news about the "man on the hill" just as the group's ritual pig hunt is reaching its climax. Simon's ritual
killing, to which Piggy and Ralph are unwitting yet complicit witnesses, is perhaps the decisive blow in
the battle between the forces of good and evil. Later Piggy loses his life at the hand of the almost totally
evil Roger, who has loosed the boulder from Castle Rock. Now, without Piggy's glasses and wise counsel
and Simon's steadfastness, Ralph is greatly weakened, and to survive he must ultimately be rescued by
adult society, represented by the British captain. It is important, however, to note that Jack, too, is
defeated because he cannot control the forces of evil. It is Jack's order to use fire to destroy Ralph's hiding
place that virtually destroys the island, although, ironically, it is the smoke from that fire that finally
attracts the British ship and leads to the boys' rescue.
Appearances and Reality
At several points in the story, Golding is at pains to stress the complexity of human life. During the novel,
neither a firm grasp of reality (represented by Piggy's scientific bent and the island's ocean side) nor the
comfort of illusions (seen in Ralph's daydreaming, Simon's silent communion with nature among the
candlebud trees, and symbolized by the sleepy lagoon side of the island) is enough to save the boys from
the forces of evil. The sun, which should represent life and the power of reason, can also be blinding. Yet
darkness is no better, as can be seen when the littluns' fantasies and fears are only further distorted by
nighttime shadows. This sense of complexity is perhaps best summed up by Ralph, speculating on how
shadows at different times of day change the appearance of things: "If faces were different when lit from
above or below—what was a face? What was anything?" This comment can also relate to the power of
the painted faces of Jack's hunters to remove the hunters from a sense of individual responsibility for their
masked deeds.
Reason and Emotion
Because of Golding's great interest in Greek and Roman mythology, this theme is sometimes summarized
by critics as the conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian aspects of life. This refers to the
Greek gods Apollo, the god of reason, and Dionysus, the god of wine and emotion. Most characters in the
story show elements of both reason and emotion. Piggy, with his interest in science and fact, may seem to
represent the life of reason, while Jack and the hunters may seem to represent the emotional side of life.
To Golding, however, matters are not that simple. Just as in Greek mythology the grave of Dionysus is
found within the temple of Apollo at Delphi, so in the story reason and emotion may battle with each
other within the same character. Thus when Roger first throws rocks, his arm is conditioned by rational
society to avoid hitting the littlun Henry. Later his emotions will overcome his reason and he will loose
the boulder that kills Piggy. Sometimes Golding shows the struggle between reason and emotion using
two characters, as when Ralph the daydreamer struggles to remember the rational ideas Piggy told him
about rescue. In the end, reason, in the form of the British captain, seems to triumph over the runaway
emotion that has led to the destruction of the island and at least two of its temporary inhabitants. But the
reflective reader will remember that the world to which the captain will presumably be trying to return
has, in fact, been destroyed by an atom bomb. This suggests that in the end the grand achievements of
science, compounded with the irrational emotions of warring powers, may have spelled the doom of
humanity.
Morals and Morality
Golding himself has said that the writing of Lord of the Files was "an attempt to trace the defects of
society back to the defects of human nature." Golding sets a group of children, who should supposedly be
closest to a state of innocence, alone on an island without supervision. In this fashion, he can test whether
the defects of society lie in the form of society or in the individuals who create it. Ralph tries to maintain
order and convince the boys to work for the common good, but he can't overcome the selfishness of Jack
and his hunters. By the time Piggy makes his plea for the return of his glasses—"not as a favor ... but
because what's right's right"—Jack and his gang can no longer recognize a moral code where law and
cooperation is best and killing is wrong. As the author once commented, "the moral is that the shape of a
society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system."
Construction
Point of View
All novels use at least one perspective, or point of view, from which to tell the story. This may consist of
a point of view of no single character (the omniscient, or "all-knowing" point of view), a single character,
multiple characters in turn, and combinations or variations on these. Golding uses the omniscient point of
view, which enables him to stand outside and above the story itself, making no reference to the inner life
of any of the individual characters. From this lofty point he comments on the action from the point of
view of a removed, but observant, bystander. Golding has commented in interviews that the strongest
emotion he personally feels about the story is grief. Nevertheless, as the narrator he makes a conscious
decision, like the British captain at the end of the story, to "turn away" from the shaking and sobbing boys
and remain detached. The narrator lets the actions, as translated through the artist's techniques of
symbolism, structure, and so on, speak for themselves. Even so dramatic and emotional an event as
Piggy's death is described almost clinically: "Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that
square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red."
Symbolism
A symbol can be defined as a person, place, or thing that represents something more than its literal
meaning. The conch shell, to take an obvious example in the story, stands for a society of laws in which,
for example, people take their turn in speaking. The pig's head is a more complex example of a symbol.
To Simon, and to many readers, it can have more than one meaning. On a rational level, Simon knows the
pig's head is just that: a "pig's head on a stick." But on a more emotional level, Simon realizes that the
pig's head represents an evil so strong that it has the power to make him faint. When he thinks of the head
as "The Lord of the Flies," the symbol becomes even more powerful, as this title is a translation of
"Beelzebub," another name for the Devil. Similarly, the fire set by using Piggy's glasses, when controlled,
could be said to represent science and technology at their best, serving humans with light and heat. When
uncontrolled, however, fire represents science and technology run amok, killing living things and
destroying the island. Simon himself can be said to symbolize Christ, the selfless servant who is always
helping others but who dies because his message—that the scary beast on the hill is only a dead
parachutist—is misunderstood. Throughout the story, the noises of the surf, the crackling fire, the
boulders rolling down hills, and trees exploding from the fire's heat are often compared to the boom of
cannons and drum rolls. In this way, Golding reminds us that the whole story is intended to repeat and
symbolize the atomic war which preceded it.
Setting
In the setting for Lord of the Flies, Golding has created his own "Coral Island"—an allusion, or literary
reference, to a book of that name by R. M. Ballantyne. Using the same scenario of boys being abandoned
on a tropical island, The Coral Island (1857) is a classic boys' romantic adventure story, like Johann
Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson, in which everyone has a great time and nobody dies or ends up
unhappy. Golding, however, has quite different ideas, and he has used the setting in his story to reinforce
those concepts. Yes, the island can be a wonderful place, as the littluns discover by day when they are
bathing in the lagoon pool or eating fruit from the trees. But at night the same beach can be the setting for
nightmares, as some boys fancy that they see "snake-things" in the trees.
Golding builds a similar contrast between the generally rocky side of the island that faces the sea, and the
softer side that faces the lagoon. On the ocean side of the island, "the filmy enchantments of mirage could
not endure the cold ocean water.... On the other side of the island, swathed at midday with mirage,
defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of rescue; but here, faced by the brute
obtuseness of the ocean... one was helpless." Thus the setting reinforces Golding's view of human nature
as a struggle of good intentions and positive concepts like love and faith against the harshness of nature
and human failings like anger.
Source Citation:
"Themes and Construction: Lord of the Flies." EXPLORING Novels. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering
Collection. Gale. Etowah High School. 30 Aug. 2013
<http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&source=gale&srcprod=DISC&userGroupName=wood904
20&prodId=DC&tabID=T001&docId=EJ2111500037&type=retrieve&contentSet=GSRC&version=1.0>.
Lord of the Flies: Beezlebub Revisited
An excerpt from "Lord of the Flies: Beezlebub Revisited," in College English, Vol. 25, No. 2,
November, 1963, pp. 90–9.
[In the following excerpt, Oldsey and Weintraub examine the thoughts and actions of the major
characters in Lord of the Flies. ]
Ralph, the protagonist, is a boy twelve years and a "few months" old. He enters naively, turning
handsprings of joy upon finding himself in an exciting place free of adult supervision. But his role turns
responsible as leadership is thrust upon him—partly because of his size, partly because of his attractive
appearance, and partly because of the conch with which, like some miniature Roland, he has blown the
first assembly. Ralph is probably the largest boy on the island (built like a boxer, he nevertheless has a
"mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil"). But he is not so intellectual and logical as
Piggy ("he would never make a very good chess player," Golding assures us), not so intuitively right as
Simon, nor even so aggressively able to take advantage of opportunity as Jack. For these reasons there has
been some reader tendency to downplay Ralph as a rather befuddled Everyman, a straw boy of democracy
tossed about by forces he cannot cope with. Yet he should emerge from this rites-of-passage
bildungsroman with the reader's respect. He is as much a hero as we are allowed: he has courage, he has
good intelligence, he is diplomatic (in assuaging Piggy's feelings and dividing authority with Jack), and
he elicits perhaps our greatest sympathy (when bounded across the island). Although he tries to live by
the rules, Ralph is no monster of goodness. He himself becomes disillusioned with democratic procedure;
he unthinkingly gives away Piggy's embarrassing nickname; and, much more importantly, he takes part in
Simon's murder! But the true measure of Ralph's character is that he despairs of democracy because of
its hollowness ("talk, talk, talk"), and that he apologizes to Piggy for the minor betrayal, and that—while
Piggy tries to escape his share of guilt for Simon's death—Ralph cannot be the hypocrite (this reversal,
incidentally, spoils the picture often given of Piggy as superego or conscience). Ralph accepts his share of
guilt in the mass action against Simon, just as he accepts leadership and dedication to the idea of seeking
rescue. He too, as he confesses, would like to go hunting and swimming, but he builds shelters, tries to
keep the island clean (thus combating the flies), and concentrates vainly on keeping a signal fire going. At
the novel's end Ralph has emerged from his age of innocence; he sheds tears of experience, after having
proven himself a "man" of humanistic faith and action. We can admire his insistence upon individual
responsibility—a major Golding preoccupation—upon doing what must be done rather than what one
would rather do.
Ralph's antagonist, Jack (the choir leader who becomes the text's Esau), is approximately the same age.
He is a tall, thin, bony boy with light blue eyes and indicative red hair; he is quick to anger, prideful,
aggressive, physically tough, and courageous. But although he shows traces of the demagogue from the
beginning, he must undergo a metamorphosis from a timidity-shielding arrogance to conscienceless
cruelty. At first he is even less able to wound a pig than is Ralph, but he is altered much in the manner of
the transformation of the twentieth-century dictator from his first tentative stirrings of power-lust to
eventual bestiality. Although Golding is careful to show little of the devil in Ralph, he nicely depicts Jack
as being directly in league with the lord of flies and dung. Jack trails the pigs by their olive-green,
smooth, and steaming droppings. In one place we are shown him deep in animalistic regression, casting
this way and that until he finds what he wants: "The ground was turned over near the pigrun and there
were droppings that steamed. Jack bent down to them as though he loved them." His fate determined,
Jack is a compelled being; he is swallowed by the beast—as it were—even before Simon: "He tried to
convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up." Jack's Faustian reward is
power through perception. He perceives almost intuitively the use of mask, dance, ritual, and propitiation
to ward off—and yet encourage simultaneously—fear of the unknown. Propitiation is a recognition not
only of the need to pacify but also of something to be pacified. In this instance it is the recognition of evil.
"The devil must have his due," we say. Here the "beast" must be mollified, given its due. Jack recognizes
this fact, even if he and his group of hunters do not understand it. Politically and anthropologically he is
more instinctive than Ralph. Jack does not symbolize chaos, as sometimes claimed, but rather a stronger,
more primitive order than Ralph provides.
Jack's chief henchman, Roger, is not so subtly or complexly characterized, and seems to belong more to
Orwellian political fable. Slightly younger and physically weaker, he possesses from the beginning all the
sadistic attributes of the demagogue's hangman underling. In his treatment of the sow he proves deserving
of his appellation in English slang. Through his intense, furtive, silent qualities, he acts as a sinister foil to
Simon. By the end of the novel Golding has revealed Roger; we hardly need be told that "the hangman's
horror clung round him."
Simon is perhaps the most effectively—and certainly the most poignantly—characterized of all. A
"skinny, vivid little boy, with a glance coming up from under a hut of straight hair that hung down, black
and coarse," he is (at nine or ten) the lonely visionary, the clear—sighted realist, logical, sensitive, and
mature beyond his years. We learn that he has a history of epileptic seizures—a dubious endowment
sometimes credited to great men of the past, particularly those with a touch of the mystic. We see the
unusual grace and sensitivity of his personality crop up here and there as the story unfolds until he
becomes the central figure of the "Lord of the Flies" scene—one of Golding's most powerful and poetic.
We see Simon's instinctive compassion and intelligence as he approaches the rotting corpse of the
parachutist, which, imprisoned in the rocks on the hill in flying suit and parachute harness, is the only
palpable "monster" on the island. Although Simon's senses force him to vomit with revulsion, he
nevertheless frees it "from the wind's indignity." When he returns to tell his frightened, blood-crazed
companions that, in effect, they have nothing to fear but fear itself, his murder becomes the martyrdom of
a saint and prophet, a point in human degeneration next to which the wanton killing of Piggy is but an
anticlimax. In some of the novel's richest, most sensitive prose, the body of Simon is taken out to sea by
the tide, Golding here reaching close to tragic exaltation as Simon is literally transfigured in death. With
his mysterious touch of greatness Simon comes closest to foreshadowing the kind of hero Golding
himself has seen as representing man's greatest need if he is to advance in his humanity—the Saint
Augustines, Shakespeares, and Mozarts, "inexplicable, miraculous."
Piggy, who, just before his own violent death, clutches at a rationalization for Simon's murder, has all the
good and bad attributes of the weaker sort of intellectual. Despised by Jack and protected by Ralph, he is
set off from the others by his spectacles, asthma, accent, and very fat, short body. Freudian analysts would
have Piggy stand as superego, but he is extremely id-directed toward food: it is Ralph who must try to
hold him back from accepting Jack's pig meat, and Ralph who acts as strong conscience in making Piggy
accept partial responsibility for Simon's death. Although ranked as one of the "biguns," Piggy is
physically incapable and emotionally immature. The logic of his mind is insufficient to cope with the
human problems of their coral-island situation. But this insight into him is fictionally blurred—denied to
the Ralphs of this world, who (as on the last page of the novel) weep not for Simon, but for "the true, wise
friend called Piggy."
How many children originally landed on the island alive we never learn; however, we do know that there
were more than the eighteen boys whose names are actually mentioned in the course of the novel. Census
matters are not helped by the first signal fire, for it goes out of control and scatters the boys in fright.
Ralph, worried about the littluns, accuses Piggy of dereliction of duty in not making a list of names.
Piggy is exaggeratedly indignant: "How could I, all by myself? They waited for two minutes, then they
fell into the sea; they went into the forest; they scattered everywhere. How was I to know which was
which?" But only one child known to any of the survivors has clearly disappeared—a small unnamed boy
with a mulberry-marked face. This fact lends little credence to Piggy's tale of decimation.
Of those who remain, at least a dozen of whom are littluns, a significant number come alive through
Golding's ability to characterize memorably with a few deft lines. Only two have surnames as well as
Christian names: Jack Merridew, already mentioned as Ralph's rival, and the littlun Percival Wemys
Madison. Jack at first demands to be called, as at school, "Merridew," the surname his mark of superior
age and authority. Percival Wemys Madison ("the Vicarage, Harcourt St. Anthony, Hants, telephone,
tele—") clutches vainly at the civilized incantation, learned by rote—in case he should get lost. And he is.
His distant recent past has so completely receded by the end of the novel that he can get no farther in selfidentification than "I'm, I'm—" for he "sought in his head for an incantation that had faded clean away."
We learn little more about him, and hardly need to. Here again, in characterization, Golding's straddling
the boundary line between allegory and naturalism demonstrates either the paradoxical power of his
weakness as novelist, or his ability to make the most of his shortcomings.
Whatever the case, Percival Wemys Madison epitomizes the novel and underlines its theme, in his
regression to the point of reduced existence. In fact, most of Golding's characters suggest more than
themselves, contributing to critical controversy as well as the total significance of the novel. In the nearly
ten years since initial publication of Lord of the Flies, critical analysis has been hardening into dogmatic
opinion, much of it allegoristic, as evidenced by such titles as "Allegories of Innocence," "Secret
Parables," and "The Fables of William Golding." And even where the titles are not indicative (as with E.
L. Epstein's Capricorn edition afterword, and the equally Freudian analysis of Claire Rosenfield), critical
literature has generally forced the book into a neat allegorical mold. The temptation is strong, since the
novel is evocative and the characters seem to beg for placement within handy categories of meaning—
political, sociological, religious, and psychological categories. Yet Golding is a simply complicated
writer; and, so much the better for the novel as novel, none of the boxes fits precisely.
Source Citation:
Oldsey, Bern, and Stanley Weintraub. "Lord of the Flies: Beezlebub Revisited." EXPLORING Novels.
Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering Collection. Gale. Etowah High School. 30 Aug. 2013